


Good-Night, Good-Bye

by beetle



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M, Post-Inception
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-14
Updated: 2013-04-14
Packaged: 2017-12-08 11:37:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/760896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for this inception_kink prompt, "too nervous to make love so i make hate."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good-Night, Good-Bye

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Mine?  
> Notes: Set post-movie, no spoilers.

  
Eames opens the door to his apartment, seeming unsurprised to see Arthur standing there, tired, rumpled, and unshaven.

"You were here all along," Arthur says plainly, and Eames's eyebrow quirks up, as if to say  _so I was_. Arthur swallows, looking down at his shoes. They're scuffed and dusty from hours and hours of walking the streets of Mombasa, lost in thought.

Arthur drops his overnight bag at his feet and shoves his hands in his pockets. Said pockets are filled with an inordinate amount of used tissues, and the wadded up remains of a handkerchief that Arthur plans to burn rather than wash and reuse. The Mombasa dust sets off allergies he didn't even know he had, but he's willing to bear it.

For Eames.

"I'm sorry about what I said, okay?" Not so much as a flicker in Eames's mask of polite interest. "I didn't mean--"

"Oh, you meant every word, didn't you, darling?"

Arthur shivers. Eames's voice means and has meant absolute  _sex_  to Arthur since the day they met, but never more so than after time apart.

This past six months has felt like a lifetime.

"Maybe I shouldn't have said it when, and the way I did."

"Gee, you think?" Eames rolls his eyes and leans against the door, as if blocking the way. But at least he doesn't close the door in Arthur's face, which is really what Arthur expected. Chase a man halfway across the globe (or so you think) for a good chunk of the year, and you get the feeling he doesn't want to talk to you. Never mind that you finally find him in the last place you left him. "I told you I loved you--something which I never tell  _anyone_  who isn't my old Nana--and you fucking dumped me like some clinging slag you didn't have the time of day for!"

Arthur flinches, but squares his shoulders. It's nothing less than what he deserves. Nothing less than the truth. "I--I didn't mean to dump you. It was a reflex--I didn't even think before I spoke, I just said what I said, and ran away."

Eames looks disbelieving. "Someone tells you they  _love you_ , and your instinct is to run screaming in the other direction?" he snorts bitterly. "Or is it just when  _I_  tell you I love you."

Arthur looks down again.  _I'll have to burn the shoes, too. They're ruined_ , he thinks. "It's just you."

Silence spins out between them, fragile and pained.

"Fuck you," Eames says softly, starting to close the door. Arthur flings out his hand, panic racing through him like his bloodstream, throbbing in his ears like a second heartbeat.

"Wait!" He's breathing hard, his mouth dry from the damned dust of this damned  _place_. But he finds there's nowhere else in the wide world that he'd rather be. "See, I'm an asshole, but I  _love_ you, too, and it makes me nervous.  _You_  make me nervous. Too nervous to make love, so I--I make hate, and I don't mean to. I don't  _want to_. Not with you."

Eames hasn't opened the door wider, but he  _is_  listening. Arthur clears his dusty throat. "I've never had a relationship in my life, not with  _anyone_ , that didn't end in disaster. I've lied, I've cheated, I've betrayed . . . I've proven in almost every way possible that I'm not made to love, or be loved. I'm not wired for it and I don't know what to do with it when I have it. When I  _feel_  it. So I hate, instead. I say awful things, do awful things. I push you away because even though it's lonely, it's a fuck of a lot better than being hated, you know?"

Arthur hangs his head, laughing a little. "Jesus Christ, talking about this shit hurts."

"Then why  _are_  you talking about it?" Eames asks quietly when Arthur doesn't go on.

"Because it's  _you_ , Edward." Arthur coughs and clears his throat again. "You're the one I can't let go of. The one I can't just walk away from. The one I have to be near because the only thing that hurts more than being near you is  _not_  being near you."

Eames's mouth quirks in something less than a smile. "That's all very poetic, Arthur, but that doesn't change the fact of who you are and what you'll do. You'll pull me closer now, but you'll only push me away again, at some point down the road. Lather, rinse, repeat, break my heart and walk away.

"Or can you promise me you won't?" Eames demands, his gaze turned piercing and intense.

Arthur shakes his head because he can't lie. At long last, this ability has been burned out of him by the fire of what he feels. "No, I can't."

Eames laughs again, but it sounds forced. "You're bloody useless, you know that, Mr. Fleischer? You can't even lie to me when it counts."

"Because I love you.  _That_  has to count for something?"

"Well, it doesn't count for enough, does it?" Eames takes a deep breath, and meets Arthur's eyes. "Look, I'm sorry, Arthur, but I really stopped caring after the part where you finally admitted that you were an arsehole," he says lightly; he's smiling, though his eyes are icy, hard, and shining. "And while declarations of love are all well and good, poppet, I'm afraid it's too late. And far too little to be getting on with."

"Edward--" Eames winces, but keeps on smiling. The ice in his gaze has thawed to something raw, that hurts Arthur to meet for long. "I love you."

"Please leave, Arthur." Eames starts to close the door again. Arthur refuses to move his arm, however, and Eames sighs. "Arthur, don't make me make you go."

"Eames, we both know I could put you in the hospital without breaking a sweat."

That eyebrow quirks again, and Arthur feels like a fool. "Is that how it is, now? You, threatening me when I won't let you have your way?"

"No, I--" Arthur smacks the door-post, frustrated and jittery. "Please. I'm not trying to threaten you, or hurt you, I only want to make things right between us."

"Then for once, do as I ask, and  _leave_!"

"Give me another chance? Please?" Arthur asks--begs, if he's being honest with himself. And he's helpless to be anything else at this late date. But Eames is shaking his head again, his pupils blown wide with the thinnest rings of grey around them.

"I already  _have_  given you a chance, darling. More than one, and . . . I can't do that, anymore."

"Is there someone else?" Arthur demands, and Eames shakes his head in negation and pity. But Arthur doesn't care. He'll take what he can get as long as it's coming from Eames. "Then you still have feelings for me?"

Eames doesn't deny it, and Arthur pushes at the door, needing to be closer--knowing everything could still be alright if he could just  _touch_. But Eames remains firm. He's silent, yet his eyes are saying everything that his mouth isn't. They're saying that Arthur's lost. Again. For keeps.

Arthur swears, trying to think past the white-noise buzz starting between his ears, and all he can find to say is: "Do you hate me?"

Eames sighs, and for just a moment, the door opens a little wider. Arthur takes the opportunity to fill his eyes with the sight of his lover, for once not wearing anything more eye-watering than grey sweatpants and an old t-shirt. Tattoos poke out from under the frayed sleeves, and show up dark through the thin fabric.

He is . . . beautiful. For Arthur to simply see him, after so much time and so much strife, is to have his heart broken over and over. Each time he blinks. But he'd take the pain of that for every moment of every day of the rest of his life, rather than the pain he knows is waiting for him, just beyond Eames's next words.

"I don't. Of  _course_  I don't hate you, Arthur. And that's the bitch of it, right there. Give Cobb my regards, will you?" he smiles that forced smile again, giving Arthur an unreadable once over that feels like it might be the last. "Good-night."

"Good--" the door snicks softly shut. "--bye."

That's the end, then.

Arthur stands there for long minutes afterward, fingering the loaded die in his pocket and waiting for a kick that never comes. Waiting. . . .

 


End file.
